“It is unfair to the people of Penang that their Chief Minister continues to make history as the first and only leader of a state who is clinging to his office despite facing multiple corruption charges”
KUALA LUMPUR: The ruling coalition’s strategic communications team has taken Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng to task again, this time, over a bungalow-for-land scam deal he was accused of soliciting and benefitting from.
In a statement, team deputy director Eric See-To pointed out that Guan Eng had yet to answer the corruption charges brought against him despite it being a year since the charges were filed.
“It is Guan Eng’s own delay tactics that is depriving himself of the chance for him to prove his innocence.
“It is unfair to the people of Penang that their Chief Minister continues to make history as the first and only leader of a state who is clinging to his office despite facing multiple corruption charges,” The Malay Mail Online reported See-To as saying.
On the 30th of June 2016, the Chief Minister pleaded not guilty to two graft-related charges read to him by Judicial Commissioner Dato’ Azmi Ariffin at the High Court complex in Penang.
The first charge, filed under Section 23 of the MACC Act, is punishable with imprisonment of up to 20 years and a fine of five times the value of the gratification.
The second charge, under Section 165 of the Penal Code, carries the maximum penalty of not more than two years in jail, or a fine, or both.
The High Court has since postponed the corruption trial pending a hearing by the Court of Appeal on claims by Guan Eng and businesswoman Phang Li Khoon that Section 62 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) Act was against the tenet of “innocent until proven guilty.”
